American Carnage

“CARNAGE”. That word—one not usually associated with inaugural addresses or any appeal to national unity—formed the smouldering, incendiary core of President Donald Trump’s first speech after taking his oath of office on January 20th. The term is how Mr Trump summed up the past few decades of social and economic change witnessed in America. Other presidents have called for reconciliation in their inaugural addresses, celebrated progress or appealed to the “better angels of our nature”—soft, hand-wringing naïfs that they were. Not Mr Trump. Speaking to Americans who live far from the West Front of the Capitol, the 45th president addressed himself to those citizens that he called “righteous people” and “forgotten men and women”. He told them that they were part of an unprecedented historical movement that had taken back power from the corrupt and selfish elites that control both political parties in Washington, an establishment that had enriched and protected itself while leaving the real America wracked by poverty, crime and insecurity. No longer, the new president promised. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

And importantly:

All populists are at heart conspiracy theorists, who pretend that easy solutions exist to society’s woes and have only not been tried to date because elites are wicked and deaf to the sturdy common-sense of decent, ordinary folk.